Keith Ballard, shown here putting his body on the line for the team, is easily the Canucks best shot blocker.
But would you describe him as the team's best defensive player?

The objective, numbers centric approach we pride ourselves on at Canucks Army isn't intuitive and admittedly some of the concepts can be challenging. As such, I figured it might be informative if I explained in depth why I've taken umbrage at the way several analysts have misused the numbers over the past week.

On St. Patrick's Day, a hockey game was played between the Vancouver Canucks and the Columbus Blue Jackets. The day after St. Patrick's Day, a hockey writer watched the game, wrote a few numbers down, and saw that the home team scored more goals than the away team. Daniel Sedin had two of them, David Booth had another, and Alex Edler had a very pretty one.

For a little bit of extra analysis, some numbers and the Statistical Three Stars and Goats, click past the jump.

You remember back in late January when it was presumed that Manny Malhotra had lost his job to then-Canuck Cody Hodgson due to an outbreak in scoring by the rookie accompanied by a marginal increase in ice time. Our friend Jonathan Willis had some fun with this notion, reinforcing that nothing had changed with the way that Malhotra was deployed, or the quality of his play, at any point during the run.

Well, now it has. Malhotra sat out the last game against the Phoenix Coyotes. While he wasn't a healthy scratch, there's reason to believe that, in the near future he could be.

The Vancouver Canucks got off to a terrific start, scoring a little under three minutes in against a potential playoff opponent in the Phoenix Coyotes, before Henrik Sedin broke his scoring slump on a Ryan Kesler powerplay goal a few minutes later. But the Coyotes clawed their way back, and, with the benefit of a bounce or two, eluded poor five-on-five play and a brutal penalty killing performance to win this game 5-4.

This was a fun game to watch, but probably not the result that you're looking for if you're a reader of this blog. For more analysis, the Statisical Three Stars, Statistical Three Goats, and scoring chance numbers you can't get anywhere else, click past the jump...

The Vancouver Canucks played the Winnipeg Jets for the first time in 16 years was the storyline coming into this one, although, I do believe they played Atlanta last spring, and Phoenix last week, so I'm not too sure about the factual basis for this one. What I do know, however, is that Winnipeg is an alright team in the playoff race, held back by some shaky goaltending.

That wasn't really on display tonight, however. The Canucks put three past Ondrej Pavelec, one by Ryan Kesler, one by Alex Edler and one by Sammy Pahlsson, but they also took 45 shots on goal and came back from a third period deficit to win 3-2.

For further analysis, Statistical Three Stars, Statistical Three Goats, and scoring chances, click after the jump…